Sept 2, 2024
Greetings from pallette,
I’m holding on to the color of August. That’s a little misleading since August is so many colors, but the words will serve for the moment. I am letting you know because soon you will want to know where to look for it.
This weekend I folded up the edge of summer, hoping to keep it from leaking out. Like when you put the rest of your sandwich back in your lunch bag and rolled the top down. Not exactly foolproof, but combined with a little hope, it works. It’s part of what I do as my summer self. That and holding these colors.
It’s the kind of thing that can sneak up on you. One day you are looking at the blue sky and you see clouds racing in opposite directions, and you notice the three crimson leaves in the maple tree. Then someone mentions that Labor Day is featured on a nearby calendar. Easy to deny those things one at a time, but taken together it’s, well, disconcerting at first.
Some days ago, just ahead of a storm, the wind pushed a chair across the deck like a petulant toddler who had just discovered his strength. I watched the chair skitter across the boards toward the edge, the wind telling me I should start thinking about putting things away for the change in season. I sniffed a laugh. I’ll decide when it’s time.
Then I was out running on Saturday, and I saw that people were putting out their Halloween decorations. I will resist my instinctual comment and approach the immorality of this affront with a more dignified response. Summer is a season and an attitude. It is not confined by the calendar, or defined by the clothes we wear. Neither is it affected by costumes others choose, including those better suited to ‘holidays’ in October, a time so far away from this date they had to name another month in between to identify it.
There are some realities of nature that are indisputable, but how much we attend to these is still our choice. It’s darker now when I have coffee on the deck, but I am in my bare feet and a t-shirt. At the other end of the day, a sunset that admittedly is now somewhat closer than I am happy about, I am dressed similarly, saluting the last colors with a cold beer. Even with the abbreviated daylight, I am holding summer here.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression, I am not looking for thanks or praise, but I have been shepherding summer around you for months now, and I will keep it here with us for quite some time. It’s not a job, it’s what I am.
I brought it with the ice cream that painted the chocolate line on the cone, puddled the Blue Moon on your thumb. I held it in place over the outdoor concert, the backyard barbecue, the garage sale your neighbor had. I have been starting it early every day so you could go for that long walk, see the dew clinging to the cobweb, the first light on the ditchflowers, the bands of low mist over the young corn fields.
Those moments sitting on the cool sand watching the sun set over the water and the campfire that inspired new thoughts and deep conversations, all came from the magic of summer. The sparkling sunlight on rushing rivers, the mountain peaks against cerulean sky, the staccato of rain on full leaves, misting through the screen as you lay there in cool sheets, drifting between dreams, all part of this same gift.
First laughs from toddlers discovering beetles. Music dosing conversation on a patio, moths dancing around porch lights, the subtle flash of a distant storm over the evening plains, all from where I send it to you, here in the middle of my heart, where summer is.
I began with the color of August, which some of you have forgotten or forgiven by now. It is not a color but the feeling of colors, the sense of summer that stays with you long after you close your eyes at the end of an impossibly full day.
The blue in the sky that seems bolder showcasing wispy flowerets of clouds on the horizon.
The luster in the water, the blue and green and that darker moss shade where you catch a glimpse of the fish dancing below. The green of the leaves and every growing thing, a living color. The tan of the fawns, the glint of the goldfinch, the endless ellipses of lighting bugs. The rainbow in the lawn sprinkler and the waterfall and the last of the storm that passes over the narrow road in the woods.
And the color of your skin, perhaps the color café au lait, laced with freckles, a little patchwork where your sandals fit, where your sunglasses rest. The skin that the sand clings to, that feels the warmth of the day, the humid afternoon, the easy breeze, the first drops of a summer shower.
Some of you may look a little sideways at these words, wondering if I am feeling sentimental about the coming of the next season. But sometime in the coming weeks you will be waiting in line for your pumpkin spice latte or trying to find that sweater you haven’t seen since February, and you will look out the window and see the blue sky, and the bands of pure light touching the deep green leaves on the maple tree, and you will feel me working. The colors will be there, the warmth of the sun, the morning birds, the blossoms that will not fade, all because I am holding it for you.
Summer cannot simply be, it must be brought and shared and that is how we keep it, no matter what the calendar suggests. It is what I do, because I am Summersmith.
Hope this finds you surrounded in color,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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